For Young Eagles pilots, the proposed rules and suggested routes as prepared by Kent Lynch have been placed in the Documents section of the chapter web site.
The treasurer has wondered if we will support the Flight Club at Dunlap High School again this year. (Contact the chapter secretary if you'd like to see a copy of the Flight Club's expenses and activities from last year.) Besides this Club, we also sponsor a scholarship at Lincoln Land Community College's aviation mechanics school. A letter soliciting donations to these causes will be sent out this summer.
The Flight Club is hoping for a Young Eagles rally this summer or fall, and we could use more pilots. For those pilots not fond of taking up the younger children, this rally will likely be limited to the high school students, so do consider volunteering your time.
Donations
We've received a combination shop tool with drill press, buffer, sander, etc. Another donation was an airless sprayer, and it has been suggested the end cap could become a spray booth. A small metal lathe will be received later this summer.
Treasury
The treasurer reports no significant change from last month.
VMC and IMC Club
Morrie, who organizes our VMC club, mentioned at the last meeting the EAA site is offering ever more material to support this club. No meeting was held in July.
The chapter 563 IMC Club met on June 10 with 6 Members in attendance. Along with our normal scenario review, was a discussion of holding an IMC Club fly-out in late August or early September. This would be a "fly IFR for food" event. A number of locations have been suggested by Tom O'Toole. Times are based on C-172 speed.
Janesville, WI (JVL) 62 minutes. Kealy’s Kafe is open everyday and good things have been heard about it.
Mattoon/Charleston, IL (MTO) 50 minutes. The Airport Steakhouse is really just a diner. Open everyday, the food is fair to good, and there is easy access from parking.
Quincy, IL (UIN) 47 minutes. The Bluehaven Cafe is a new restaurant in the old terminal. Also open everyday except Monday and has good comments.
If other chapter members would like to go along and see what working in the IFR environment is like, they are welcome. If any of the IMC Club members would like to suggest other venues, let Kent Lynch know. Please come to the July meeting with suggested dates as well. The July meeting will be this coming Sunday, July 8 at 6 PM in the hangar.
Volunteers
Have you signed up for mess duty any month this year? There are slots available for breakfast work, and each entry gets you a ticket in the drawing for a prize at the end of the year.
Members
Along with his passenger, Bob Burkhart died in the crash of his 1946 Ercoupe on June 24. His obituary can be found here. Newspaper reports suggest an engine or fuel problem preceded a stall/spin into woods less than a mile from the Monmouth airport.
Bill Larson is flying off the time on the new 3300 Jabiru installation in his Sonex. He reports it's quite peppy now.
Congratulations to Don Wolcott who has taken his Waiex up for the first time:
Waiex 132YX flew for the first time on June 24 at CTK Ingersol Airport in Canton ILL. I was assisted by Bill Larson, good friend and fellow Sonex owner, and good friend and cameraman Kent Lynch. My previous flying experience has been in a Champ and an Ercoupe. Imagine my surprise when doing an approach with only that experience. This plane just wants to fly and is very responsive. Took several approaches to get the feel for the correct control inputs to slow the plane down to the proper speeds for landing. This is going to be a fun plane to fly.
Successful conclusion to the first flight
Dave Fox has been back in town, and he and his girlfriend were introduced to the members present at the last board meeting. Anna has been active in an association preparing memorials to the Lend-Lease program between the U.S. and her native Russia. Once they return to Peoria, Dave's Zenith Zodiac will fill the empty spot in the hangar.
Karl and Kip Kleimenhagen are making steady but not spectacular progress on their RANS S-20 kit, and a somewhat verbose report follows:
We chose to begin with the aluminum wing kit. The first step created some concerns. We started with black 3M 800 grit paper which makes short work of deburring corners and polishing out scratches. One of the chapter's tech counselors suggested we look into sandpaper materials approved by the FAA. Sure enough, there are concerns with the silicon carbide used in many of the finer papers. The FAA's AC-43.13-1B has conflicting information, with one table saying don't use it but a paragraph a few pages later says it's suitable. An older NASA document recommends it. The UK's CAA had a recent paper recommending one "avoid" using silicon carbide on aluminum for fear of it embedding in the material. We chose to keep the one aileron we'd finished with it but replaced all the paper with aluminum oxide sheets. In finer grits, this can be difficult to find. Nena's has it to 400, and Advance Auto has polishing discs to 800. For bigger jobs we got maroon Scotch-Brite 7447 from Grainger, which is a bit coarser than 400. (The finer Sctoch-Brite pads are silicon carbide.)
Chapter membership proved handy again when preparing our aileron and flap hinges. Here, a good 5/16" hole must be drilled in the hinge brackets to receive a bronze bushing. The new Jet drill press donated by Bill Engel was the perfect tool. We did learn, though, that published recommended rpm for drilling aren't always practical. About 3000 is recommended for this diameter in aluminum, but as Bill Larson and Greg LePine recommended, 500 or less is more like it. The test holes drilled in scrap at 3000 looked poor. Worse, the chuck on the drill would vibrate loose at this speed. At 500 rpm we got clean holes. Next we used a press in the hangar to fit the bushings.
Speaking of drill bits, C & H Repair on S.W. Adams here in Peoria has excellent U.S. made drill bits in all sizes. Our wing kit came with a #30 "cobalt" bit. Drilling with it was a chore; it didn't seem to want to bite into the stock with either a low speed electric drill or high speed pneumatic. The U.S. bit cuts nicely either way. The other bit has become a dowel to test rivet hole diameters.
The first assembly completed: left aileron
RANS has long used tubular spars in their designs, and the flaps and ailerons on our wing have them. Deburring a row of rivet holes in such a spar presents a problem, since you can't get to the back of the holes. Looking down the tube revealed the holes supplied by RANS were, shall we say, rough. We bought a Burraway from Cogsdill, although an E-Z Burr would likely work as well. Both have a spring loaded cutter which retracts into the mandrel as it is either pushed into or pulled from the bore. We chose the Burraway because they offered three different cutter angles, one of which they recommended for aluminum. Practicing on scrap aluminum, we found the cutter is too aggressive at the rpms recommended by Cogsdill, cutting a chamfer beyond the 10% depth maximum recommended in older MilSpecs. Using a low speed electric drill helped, but the tool was very prone to clogging with chips at this speed, with the burrs wedging in the slot in which the cutter moves. Also, in setting the cutter's tension low enough to avoid chamfering too deeply, we found it couldn't track the perimeter of the hole accurately, it being not flat due to the inside diameter of the tubing. In a moment of frustration, we tried running the tool manually, and this proved the best. Were I to do it again, I'd buy the cutter that works only on the pull side. Ours is bidirectional but is far too agressive for sheet metal, and in the tubing it's only needed for the pull stroke.
The supplied rivets have cost us some time. In doing the ailerons, we noticed some of the mandrels were loose. RANS called these a "Cherry Q rivet," and we had looked them up, only to find Cherry doesn't catalog such a rivet. Avdel makes the Q rivet, and their part number matches that RANS uses. This is a strong, all aluminum rivet, with a mandrel designed to seal against water and remain fixed. Our rivets didn't match this, and a test with a magnet revealed the mandrels were plain steel. Zenith uses rivets of similar construction, and one doesn't look at too many Zeniths before finding rusty mandrels. We called the factory and were told their supply of all aluminum rivets dries up at times and they substitute these. Planning to polish our wings but not wanting 2000 spots of rust on them, we looked for the all aluminum jobs, which we found at Hanson.
As one post in the RANS forums noted, RANS are not a good choice for a first time builder. Still, when it's the only kit airplane in which you fit, you learn to grin and press on.
Airport
3MY
The helicopter which hovered past our hangar to and from its hangar was piloted by Jeff Green, the owner of Green Chevrolet and Green Ford, who was a contributor to our chapter sometimes. He died in a car race in Canada June 16 driving his 1972 Lola T300.
Richard LaHood had earlier found that Phil Skinner from the Culver's in Morton was willing to donate their surplus picnic tables. These are nice, sturdy concrete units. We'd asked for two but he wanted to be rid of three, and a crew from 563 was dispatched to accommodate him. Kent Lynch brought his large trailer and, fortunately, a battery powered impact wrench. Along with Greg LePine, Ron Wright, and Rich Gilbert, the crew had these hefty tables apart and back to 3MY within a few hours. Many thanks go to all involved in this. The chapter will now have to decide how to place these tables at the FBO.
